


A Dustland Fairytale

by nightnerd



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alludes to romance but no developed relationships, I'm so sorry, Suicide tw (very brief)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4961302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightnerd/pseuds/nightnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Fitz, Trip, and Coulson leave on a mission, Jemma doesn't even think to worry about them until she finds out her best friend never made it back and realizes that he died before they had a chance to talk. AU take on 2x8, The Things We Bury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dustland Fairytale

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> I would just like to note that this actually written by my friend Cate (http://taylorsswiift.tumblr.com/), who requested for me to post this on her behalf. Similarly, I would like to apologize on her behalf for what is about to come.

The funny thing is that she didn’t even see it coming.

And she probably should have. She should have known. She’d never believed in fairytales as a little girl, so she wasn’t quite sure why she expected her own happy ending. Or why she _still_ expected one, anyway. Maybe at one point she would have dared to venture into that realm. Into thinking that maybe she would continue on with being so content. But that was...a long time ago. Certainly not any time recently. Not for the past six months. Even during the Hydra invasion, she’d still held some hope. And in the face of Ward’s betrayal, she’d had _Fitz’s_ hope, which was sometimes enough to get through the day. But after the pod…

After the pod, she’d lost all hope.

She felt terrible that she even had to _ask._ Wasn’t that something that she should have known? Instinctively? Shouldn’t she have been able to _feel_ losing her other half? She should have sensed it. She should have immediately recognized that something was very, very wrong. She should have asked the second they walked through the door where he was. She should have noticed _sooner_ that he wasn’t with them. She’d just assumed that he was carrying in supplies, or that he was talking to someone outside...it had never crossed her mind that maybe...she’d never _dreamed_ …

And after, after that she’d been so caught up in tending to Trip, and making sure he healed up properly. Making sure he got stitched up, and that nothing got infected, and that he would enjoy a full and speedy (well, as speedy as things like getting an artery severed could be) recovery. She’d applied _their_ compound to his wounds, and had smiled just a little. She’d dared to hope that maybe one day they’d be able to get back to that place, if she ever got the courage to talk to him. Or he to her. Because she still didn’t know. She still didn’t even feel it. She felt just fine.

And it makes her physically ill that right after he died, she _felt just fine._

She’d gone and she’d eaten quietly on her own, because she didn’t want to disturb him, and she was used to it now, and they weren’t back at that point anyway. It had occurred to her that maybe she should make him something just because he _had_ to be hungry, and she hadn’t seen him around yet. But she just figured he was sleeping. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time. He’d crashed shortly after he’d gotten back from that very first mission with Ward in Ossetia. After she’d finished recounting her tale about accidentally shooting Sitwell (something they both seemed half-distressed, half-amused by), they’d gone and lounged on the couch, and he’d passed out a few minutes into an episode of Doctor Who that they’d managed to locate on TV. And she’d thought at the _time_ that memory had hurt to recall. She had no idea that within that day, it’d have the power to rip her heart out.

She didn’t find out until five hours later. Five hours. Five _hours._ For five hours, her very best friend in the world - because regardless of what had happened between them, he still held that title in her life - hadn’t been on this Earth, and she hadn’t had even the slightest inkling. And no one had told her. Later on, they’d tell her it was because they hadn’t known what to say. If you asked her, she’d say that was an absolutely miserable excuse, and that she should have been notified immediately. They shouldn’t have drawn it out. They shouldn’t have let her go about her business believing that he was somewhere around and had made it back safe and sound from the mission, and that everyone had survived. They shouldn’t have let her think that the scariest thing that happened was Trip’s injury. And, speaking of Trip, how could _he_ let her go on like nothing was wrong, when he _knew_? He knew, and he just let her go on, not believing, not seeing, not understanding.

She’d only found out later that night when she’d tried to go into the lab, and Bobbi had stopped her at the door. And she’d greeted her so pleasantly. Smiled her big smile for what would be the last real time within her recent memory and said, “Oh! Bobbi. I wasn’t expecting to see you down here. Wh-” Which was as far in as she got before Bobbi stuck her arm out, preventing her from entering through the mostly opaque doors. If she had looked through the small portion of the glass that was transparent, she would have seen the top of a very familiar head, and would have known. But she didn’t look. Why would she? She didn’t piece it together that if Bobbi was just standing around outside of the lab, something was probably up. She had access everywhere, just like Jemma did. The whole process was so painfully slow. There was no ripping off the bandaid. They dragged it off of her, millimeter by millimeter, making sure it hurt the whole way. Seeing to it that it left a bright red, angry mark on her. There was a part of her that reminded her that they were her friends, and they meant no real harm, and that it _was_ a very tricky subject. She wasn’t sure how she _wanted_ them to tell her, or what she expected of them. There was no possible way to deliver that information without it feeling like someone had taken an axe to her chest and split her wide open. There was nothing gentle or nice about it.

Bobbi’s expression remained careful and blank, like she was in an interrogation. She’d watched as Jemma cocked her head at her, silently asking her a question that she knew she wouldn’t like the answer to. “You can’t go in there,” was all she said, lowering her arm when Jemma stepped back.

A certain sadness clouded her eyes then, but those clouds were nothing compared to the perfect storm that was to come. “Is it Fitz?” she asked, watching the other woman. “He doesn’t want to speak to me. Is that it?”

Something else crossed over Bobbi’s expression, but it was so fleeting that Jemma didn’t quite catch it. “Not exactly,” she told her, voice still far too calm, and far too soft, and far too devoid of her usual personality for Jemma’s liking. “They’re...examining someone. It’s best you stay out here.”

Jemma crossed her arms, straightening her posture even more than it naturally was already. “If they’re examining someone, then I have a right to be involved. And if someone else is hurt, then I’d like to help.”

Bobbi looked down before looking back up at her. “The person they’re examining isn’t alive.”

_That_ got Jemma’s attention. She unfolded her arms and her defensive posture ebbed away into something else. Something a little afraid. But still, the first thing she did was scoff gently and say, “With Fitz in there? For an autopsy? Highly unlikely.”

Bobbi shook her head. “Not an autopsy. Just...an examination. We know how he died.”

The beginnings of dread were slowly beginning to unfurl themselves in Jemma’s stomach, twisting their way up and starting to wrap themselves around her organs, even though she didn’t quite know yet. “I wasn’t aware...I just mean that...nobody informed me that we’d brought back a deceased with us.” She looked back at Bobbi, silence ringing between them, the whole environment too still for comfort. “Was he...was he a Hydra soldier?”

Bobbi looked down again.

Everything inside of Jemma liquified in the worst way, making her feel immediately queasy. “Bobbi…” she tried again carefully, voice already wavering suspiciously even though she was trying her hardest to stay polite and calm. “Please tell me that he was a Hyrda agent. Or someone that isn’t on the team. Because...the only ones who went...were...and...the only one I haven’t seen is…” Her breathing was increasing steadily, feeling like her throat was closing in. She couldn’t say his name. She didn’t want to hear her confirm it. Hear her tell her that the worst possible thing had happened. “Bobbi, _please._ ”

It was only then that Bobbi looked back up, her blank expression softened, not saying anything at all for a moment. “I’m so sorry,” she said finally.

The pieces didn’t fall into place, they _crashed_. They flung themselves on top of her, and buried her alive. Before she knew what she was doing or what was happening, she was barrelling through the doors of the lab with Bobbi right behind her. She’d had every intention of marching right in to get a different explanation, anything, _anything_ other than Fitz being dead, but she stopped cold as soon as she saw his hair peeking out through the opening of a body bag, parted to either side of his body. She barely felt Bobbi’s hands gripping her upper arms. For one borderline blissful moment, she didn’t feel anything at all. Then it all hit her like a brick.

The sound that left her mouth was a scream, no two ways about it. But it was more raw than those from fear. It wasn’t clean around the edges, or high pitched. It was rough, and strained, and fueled by the onslaught of anguish coursing through her. She doubled forward, held up only with Bobbi’s support, crippled with grief. She couldn’t cry, because she couldn’t think, and she couldn’t move. She was _paralyzed_ with distress. The flow of emotions in her flooded her system, and shut down everything all at once. All she could do was lean forward hard, eyes screwed shut and mouth wide open, no noise coming out. And it all happened on such an instinctual level that it wasn’t until enough of that had ebbed away that she could even _begin_ to process the fact that Leopold Fitz was dead.

When she’d opened her eyes she was hyperventilating, and she summoned up the last of her strength to try to hurl herself at Fitz, trying to be closer to him, like maybe she could still save him. Like maybe if she just went over there, he’d come back to life if she asked him to. Like maybe it would change something. But Bobbi was stronger, and Jemma snapped back to her like a rubber band and then crumpled, all of the fight leaving her.

Bobbi wrestled her to the floor and pulled her tightly into her arms. That was when Jemma finally broke down. When it clicked. The rotating wheel of emotions in her mind finally hit sadness, and she broke down sobbing on the other woman’s shoulder. Heavy, gut-wrenching, nauseating sobs. Sobs that didn’t help her get in any more oxygen, even though Bobbi was coaching her, telling her that she needed to breathe. She didn’t understand how she was supposed to take in air when there was none left in the room. She didn’t understand how she was supposed to breathe when he couldn’t anymore.

She was so preoccupied that she missed Coulson ordering everyone out of the room.

Marie Curie once said that, “Nothing in life is to be feared - it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

But Jemma didn’t understand any of this at all. She didn’t _want_ to.

She squirmed in Bobbi’s embrace and the other woman let her go. Maybe because she was tired of fighting her, maybe because everyone else was gone by then. Jemma didn’t think too hard about the answer. She crawled over to the trashcan and got sick, sinking again to push her forehead against the cool metal of the bin, violently shaking hands gripping the edge so tightly she thought she might break her fingers. Bobbi kept her distance, and Jemma was glad she did. Any touch felt suffocating at the moment. The person she usually would have gone to for comfort was the same person lying on the table behind her. Which seemed so unbearably cruel. She couldn’t go to him for comfort about his own death. 

How sick was that?

At some point she turned her back to the wall and sank back into the corner, pulling her knees tightly to her chest and tucking her head as far down as it would go, spine stretched to the max. She wanted the numbness back. She didn’t want to feel anything. Because she’d never felt pain this intense, and this pervasive, and this parasitic before in her _life_ and she was choking on it, and it was choking her. It was swelling inside her and pushing out against her skin, making her feel like she was going to burst any second. She didn’t like it. She didn’t know what to do with it. It made her want to crawl out of her own skin. Claw at her own flesh to get it off of her.

Some time later, she shakily got to her feet. She wasn’t sure if it was three minutes later or three months that had passed. Time didn’t seem to be a linear concept anymore. Nothing was. Everything was chaotic and swirling, and the whole world had been thrown off its axis. She kept waiting to wake up. Kept waiting to jolt upright in her bunk, and have it be October of 2013, when they had first gotten on the Bus. She kept waiting to wake up to his longer hair, and their days of working together in the lab for hours on end, and their nights of lounging around together, and taking breaks from what they were working on to get tea together, and marathoning _Harry Potter_ movies together. Instead, she was stuck there. In a space where there could be no more together. She was stuck in an infinitely Fitz-less space, and everything felt darker because of it.

She carefully wandered over to him steadying herself by putting her hands on the edge of the table. She stared down at him, a warped expression on her face. Tentatively, she reached out and skimmed his now-cool cheek with her fingertips, not liking the new texture his skin had. Her eyes drifted to his chest, where she could still see blood on his dark field clothing, and she cringed. She only became aware that Bobbi was standing on the other side of the table when she spoke, and Jemma jumped. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and only ending up with a thought that wound up sending another incapacitating wave of grief over her as the circumstances surrounding his death came back to her. They hadn’t left it on good terms. They hadn’t actually talked about what happened. They hadn’t talked about anything. Which meant…

“Oh, God,” Jemma gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth, fingers digging into her cheek, feeling like she was going to be sick again. “H-he...he…” she swallowed thickly, lowering her hand to her chin, shaking her head, the tears audible in her voice. “He died t-thinking that I didn’t want him. He thought I left because of what he said, o-or because he was... _broken_ and I, I never t-talked to him, and now -” Another sob abruptly ripped itself from her mouth, and her hand slid back up to cover it, eyes clenching shut. Her voice was becoming increasingly high in pitch, and it was getting breathier with each word. “And I never talked to him,” she told the other woman, her tone high enough that it was almost painful to listen to. “I, I just as-sumed there would be time and now...he’s _dead_ and he died thinking that I didn’t care about him. That I didn’t -”

She cut herself off there. She couldn’t even start to delve into that. Not with everything else going on. He looked down at him with tears dripping down her cheeks and onto the black vinyl of the bag that he should _not have been lying in._ “I am so sorry, Leo,” she whispered fiercely, feeling more tears come with the admission. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. Leo, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry, Leo. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am so sorry…” The words were tumbling off her lips faster than she could consciously string together, showering his remains with apologies, as if if she said enough of them, she could break through. She could get him to understand that _none of this_ was the way this was supposed to go, and that there was so much that she never got to talk through with him, and that there was no version of any reality where she wouldn’t want him anymore. 

She leaned forward and pressed her head to his shoulder for a moment, but righted herself almost immediately, because he felt so unnatural. She looked to Bobbi with tears still streaming down her face. “Can...can we cover him up?” she asked her carefully, voice quiet, looking like a shell of herself. “I know...I know it’s not logical but...he...he looks so _cold_ and -” she shook her head hard, feeling yet another round of tears come on. “And he _hates_ to be cold,” she whispered out.

Bobbi, to her credit, just nodded. She didn’t try to tell Jemma that it didn’t matter, or point out that just because his body was cold didn’t mean _he_ was cold, because he couldn’t feel it anymore. She just went and grabbed a blanket from the closet in the lab (it was more of a hospital blanket, but it would do) and gave it to her, stepping back again. 

Jemma took it and carefully tucked it around him, trying not to flinch away from how stiff and still he was. It wasn’t right to see him like that. He was so full of life, every second of every day. Always moving, never sitting still. He was always fidgeting with something, or putting something together, or taking it apart. Always shifting, or eating. Even when he slept, he moved some. She remembered that from the few rare occasions when they shared a bed. In the past, she’d almost dared to think that was because he’d wanted to be closer to her. Now she couldn’t even consider that without feeling like she was going to be sick again.

She stayed there for a long time that night. Bobbi suggested they leave at one point, but Jemma asked to stay with him, and Bobbi insisted on staying with her. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, was probably a good thing. There were a few times that night when she caught herself thinking of ways to be with him again. Ways to rejoin her best friend. But Bobbi was there, so nothing happened. She would alternate between several different things. There was the sobbing, the unparalleled grief, when the anguish would hit her and she would be curled in the corner again, crying her eyes out because she didn’t know what else to do. There was the guilt, that rolled in and out like the tide, and drowned her every time she considered the fact that he never knew how much he meant to her, even if she hadn’t sorted out on what level yet. There were times when she was calm enough for Bobbi to make her drink some water, and she would tell her a nice story about Fitz, and Bobbi would listen attentively, laughing or smiling in the right places. Those stories usually ended in one of the other two options, though, and she got knocked right back down to square one. Bobbi told her it was normal. That she wasn’t going to get over it the first night, sitting in the same room as him.

That was when Jemma agreed to leave.

Even after that, though, it was a fight to actually get her out the door. She realized at some point that leaving meant saying goodbye for the last time, and that made her have to turn to be sick again. She’d never prepared herself for a permanent goodbye with him. Even when he’d been in a coma, and those nine days dragged on, and on, and on, he was _breathing_. He was there, and she could go check on him as much as she wanted, and she could listen to the steady beeping of his heart monitor. She could check his vitals to reassure herself that he was doing fine. There had still been the constant, consistent hope that he would wake up and everything would be fine again, even though she tried to tell herself over, and over, and over again that that wasn’t guaranteed, and that she shouldn’t hope on that. But this...this was brutal in its immediacy. This was hard, and fast, and there was no coming back from it. There would be no returning to him. There were no vitals to check. No heartbeat to listen to to calm herself down. Just him on a slab with bullet holes in his chest. And she knew all too well what they did with the dead. There was no place to bury them. Cremation was their only option. So after she left, she’d never see his face in person again. There would be no funeral. And he didn’t legally exist anymore, anyway, so there couldn’t be a headstone.

She wasn’t ready.

She went over to him again and carefully kissed his forehead and then ran her fingers through his hair a few times. Unnerved by his lifeless form or not, she had to at least say her goodbye properly. Bobbi agreed to stand as close to the doors as she could to give her as much privacy as possible. “I guess this is it, Leo,” she whispered tearfully to him, still carding her hand through his waves. “I...am going to miss you so much.” Tears pricked the back of her eyes again, and it wasn’t long before she was weeping again. She hated crying. But she was at a genuine loss as to how to stop. She didn’t think it was possible. Not with him _dead._ “I already do. I have for the past seven months. And I am so sorry that I did not tell you that. And it is my hope that...one day you’ll forgive me.” She sniffed heavily, smiling just a bit even though what she was doing was effectively sticking her already fragmented heart through a paper shredder. “And if you do turn out to be right about ghosts, then I want you to come back as one to tell me, because I would like to know. And I would do _anything_ to bring you back…” her voice grew higher and sharper again, but she forced it back, trying to get all of her words out before she broke down (“before” not “in case”, because she knew full well that was how this goodbye would end).

“You are still my best friend. And you will always be my best friend,” she promised him, fingertips skimming over his cheek again briefly before skittering shakily back up to his hair, the fear at how his skin felt striking her again. “And I’m so sorry for everything that went wrong. I’m so, so sorry. I should have made it clearer to you that I care about you, and I didn’t, but I hope that maybe now you know. Which...is absurd.” Then again, so was talking to a dead body. But there she was, doing it anyway. “I never wanted to say goodbye to you. I can’t do this,” she mumbled, sticking her head in her hands. “I can’t do this. You have to come back, because _I can’t do this._ ” Her shoulders shook, and then her whole body followed suit, crumbling in on herself again. “Please, _please_ , Leo. Please come back. Please. Ju-just come back. Because this is too hard, and I can’t do it, and I can’t lose you, so please just come back.” She rested her head against the table, crying too hard to stand properly anymore. “I am so sorry. Please. Come back. We don’t have to be friends, or partners. I can leave if you don't want me around. Just please, _please_ come back…”

She tried to tell him everything, but she still felt like she got nowhere near. She told why she left, and she told him what she’d hoped she would find when she came back. She told him that she felt responsible for everything that had happened because she took the oxygen when she felt they should have waited just a bit longer and tried to figure out another way. She told him she hadn’t watched the premiere of _Doctor Who_ because he wasn’t with her, and she told him she probably never would. There were so many parts of her life that were going to have to be cut out now if she didn't want to think about him. She wouldn’t be able to watch _Harry Potter_ , either. She wouldn’t be able to work in any lab. She wouldn’t be able to make tea. She wouldn’t be able to even look at the word _monkey_. She wouldn’t be able to smell microwave popcorn, or put on the necklace and earrings that she wore every day, or read her favorite book. She wouldn’t be able to do _anything_ in life without running smack dab into his memory. She’d already discovered that much. But it was going to be so much worse from here on out. 

They stuck around for another hour after she was finished, and Bobbi let her cry and cry and _cry_. It was only after Jemma had been silent for twenty-seven minutes that she finally stepped forward and gently said, “Come on, Jemma. It’s time to go.”

The team entrusted his things to her. They said they thought it was what was best, considering she knew him the best. They didn’t way _was closest to him_. They said _knew him the best._ Because other people had been close to him when he died. But she still knew him like the back of her hand.

That didn’t, however, mean she had any idea of where to start.

She poked her head into his room late one night three days after he died when she couldn’t sleep, and hated how everything still looked like he might come back. How there was still an empty beer bottle on the nightstand that he’d forgotten to toss, and his bed was still perfectly made. There was still a stray shoe on the ground, and a small pile of jeans. She didn’t have the heart to move any of it.

She gravitated to the photo on his wall. The one she had taken of them in Peru. She carefully untacked it, smiling with teary eyes as she thumbed over his smiling face feeling a little bit closer to him, if only for a moment. She remembered then that he had a tin of photos stashed somewhere. _That_ she knew what to do with. That she wanted immediately.

Fitz was tidy and reliable she she located it quickly in the top drawer of his nightstand beside a few notebooks. She took it out, grabbed a t-shirt of his, and then crept back out, like she was afraid of being caught. She slunk back to her bunk and locked the door behind her, crawling back onto her bed. She peeled off her shirt and pulled his too-large one on instead, hugging the fabric to her body. She knew it was silly. She knew it didn’t logically mean anything. It was just an article of clothing that still smelled vaguely like him. She probably shouldn’t have even been wearing it. It’s not like they were -

But they _were_ , weren’t they?

She stayed up for a long time, thumbing through his photographs. Ones of his family from when he was a kid, and ones of them from not so long ago. Ones of the whole team together (she noticed Ward’s face wasn’t scratched out, and she wondered how he had enough strength to resist that). She looked through them all until she found one of them from when they were sixteen, taken in what she _thought_ was her dorm (it was so hard to tell). They were so _young_ , and so _happy_ , and the whole scene was so _innocent_. Just a couple of kids. Just a couple of kids who had _no idea_ what was coming. Strangely, though, the photo didn’t make her sad. It could have. For many, _many_ reasons. It could have kicked back in her guilt. But it made her feel an odd sort of peace instead. Like if she just focused on that brace-faced smile of his, and that one cardigan of hers that she wore everywhere during their freshman year, then she could go back there. And not be here anymore.

For the first time since he died, she was able to sleep with exhaustion clouding her mind and that photo in her hand.


End file.
